TODAY’S STUDY: WHO IN THE WORLD IS DOING WHAT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?

The report highlighted below defines 155 existing climate change-related laws in 16 countries. They represent a wide spectrum of approaches to driving the growth of New Energy and cutting climate change-inducing greenhouse gas spew governments have implemented and are implementing to deal with global climate change. Most date no further back than 2008. Most were introduced to serve national and economic interests as well as altruistic intentions toward the health of this good earth.

Yet the U.S. Congress cannot seem to even find a way to pass laws to provide stable, long-term policy support for the development of a New Energy economy that would give the nation energy security, economic revitalization and cleaner air and water, despite the fact that poll after poll shows the electorate in favor of New Energy by overwhelming 4-to-1 and 5-to-1 majorities.

If that isn’t proof of the power of vested, monied interests, there is none. One solution: Join a New Energy political action group like Power of Wind or The Solar Energy Advocacy Network.

GLOBE Climate Legislation Study
Terry Townshend, Sam Fankhauser, Adam Mathews, Clement Feger, Jin Liu and Thais Narcisco, April 2011 (GLOBE International and Grantham Research Institute)

Introduction

The Global Legislators Organisation, known as GLOBE International, has been running a climate change dialogue for cross‐party legislators from the major economies since 2005. This has provided a forum for legislators to be briefed by some of the world’s leading experts on the latest science and economics, share experiences and best practice, help to break down partisan divides and identify common ground. Legislators from 16 countries are involved in the process, which together account for about three quarters of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They are Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union (EU), France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA).

The process has resulted in some significant outcomes, providing political insights to help inform the official UN process. Specific outcomes include agreement on a post-2012 framework paper…a set of ‘legislative principles on climate change’…and, most recently, agreement on a politically acceptable legal form for a post-2012 agreement.

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It is clear that national legislation is a critical element of the response to climate change. Advancing ambitious laws not only helps to reduce harmful emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change now, even in the absence of an international agreement, but also helps to advance national positions, giving leaders the confidence to go further in the formal United Nations (UN) negotiations. And by moving together, and in a consistent fashion, legislators can ensure that the benefits of moving to a low carbon economy are magnified.

Following the agreement on the ‘legislative principles on climate change’, GLOBE members felt that it would be helpful to map the existing climate change and energy legislation in the major economies to identify gaps and best practice, helping to establish what has worked well and could be replicated elsewhere.

As a result, GLOBE International partnered with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics to produce this study, which will form the basis of the next phase of GLOBE’s work in working with national GLOBE chapters to advance domestic climate change legislation and supporting the role of legislators in holding their governments to account.

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Climate Change Laws, Patterns and Trends

What is a Climate Change Law?

For the purposes of this project we defined climate change law as:

“Legislation, or regulations, policies and decrees with a comparable status, that refer specifically to climate change or that relate to reducing energy demand, promoting low carbon energy supply, tackling deforestation, promoting sustainable land use, sustainable transport, or adaptation to climate impacts.”

This definition is fairly arbitrary and the authors have applied it with flexibility on a country-by-country basis to ensure the best reflection of the overall legislative, regulatory and policy response to climate change in the 16 study countries. As a result, this paper does not offer an exhaustive list of all climate-relevant legislation.

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The authors were also strict about including laws under consideration. The detailed country annexes only include laws, regulations, policies and decrees that have been passed and that have come into effect. However, significant current legislative efforts that have not yet passed, or recently failed, have been referenced in the country summaries. For example, there are several current proposals in Mexico that are referred to in the summary. And in the USA, the most prominent recent unsuccessful attempts to pass a comprehensive climate change bill are analysed in the USA section.

Our focus on legislation at the federal level also excludes significant action at regional and local levels of government. This is particularly significant in countries with federal structures (e.g. Brazil, India and South Africa) and, within this category, in countries where federal legislation has been slow when compared with activity at the subnational level (e.g. USA and Canada).

For EU Member States covered by this study (France, Germany, Italy and the UK), we have not replicated EU Directives listed under the EU section in each of the individual Member States-profiles, unless that country has implemented legislation that goes significantly beyond the scope of the Directive. For example, the French Farming Policy Framework goes beyond the EU Biofuels Directive.

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Climate Change Legislation in Numbers

Our study covered 155 existing climate change-related laws in the 16 study countries. This is not an exhaustive list, as has been explained above, given that climate change legislation is difficult to define, but the country annexes demonstrate that climate change is featuring prominently on the legislative agenda across the 16 major economies. As of April 2011, the UK had the most climate change related laws with 22, and South Africa had the fewest with just 3. However, the number of laws relating to climate change is not a reliable indicator of the comprehensive nature of a given country’s legislative response. Some laws are integrative whilst others are very narrow in scope.

Timing

In the countries covered by this study, the first law referring specifically to climate change was passed in 1998 by Japan (the Law Concerning the Promotion of Countermeasures to Cope with Global Warming) but the vast majority of legislation relating to climate change, particularly the ‘flagship’ laws outlined in Table 1 below, have been introduced since 2008. It is likely that many of these later laws were motivated by the need to present a positive national narrative at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009, the scheduled end point for post‐2012 negotiations under the Bali Roadmap (see section 2.3 below on motivations). In addition, as of April 2011, there is much legislation under preparation, for example the Chinese government is drafting a comprehensive climate change law to support the goals in the newly-published 12th Five Year Plan, Mexico’s General Law on Adaptation and Mitigation and General Law on Climate Change are being debated in the Mexican Congress and the South African government is expected to publish a White Paper ahead of hosting the UN climate change negotiations in Durban in December. This activity suggests that the difficult talks in Copenhagen, and the subsequent slow progress in the formal negotiations, has not diminished countries’ appetite for developing climate change legislation, perhaps recognising that many of the actions required to reduce emissions and to adapt to a changing climate, are directly in the national interest.

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Flagship Legislation

In the majority of countries it is possible to identify ‘flagship’ legislation: a key piece of legislation through which lawmakers have attempted to put their stamp on climate change policy…These are often integrative laws that bring together the various strands of pre-existing and new climate change regulation under one legislative umbrella, such as has occurred in Brazil, France, South Korea and the UK. In China and India, the five-year plans serve a similar purpose.

Motivations

Countries had different points of entry into climate change legislation, and different reasons to embark on legislative action. From discussions with legislators involved in passing climate change laws, three main motivations have been identified: economic factors, pursuit of international leadership and a sense of vulnerability to climate change.

Economic

The primary motivation for climate change legislation was often economic. For example, South Korea’s Green Growth Law, which includes targets for emissions reduction and creates the legislative platform for the move to a low carbon economy, was at least partly driven by the concern to protect Korea’s competitiveness against the backdrop of the likely imposition of carbon tariffs in Korea’s main export markets (all the draft bills in the US have included carbon tariffs, to be imposed on imports from countries which, in the view of the US Congress, are not taking comparable action to reduce emissions). At the same time, South Korea saw the opportunity to kick start the economy through ‘green’ fiscal stimulus, investing in low carbon infrastructure and improving competitiveness by reducing energy costs.

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Elsewhere, climate finance opportunities relating to the Kyoto mechanisms mattered for Russia, which has a large surplus of credits following its industrial collapse after the 1990 Kyoto baseline date for emissions. Finance was also important, at least to some extent, in Indonesia, where forestry legislation has been facilitated by a USD 1billion Norwegian grant…

Activity in the USA has been primarily about energy security. One of the biggest political issues in the USA is how to reduce reliance on foreign oil. Thus many of the proposed legislative measures have included support for domestic sources of energy (offshore drilling for oil and gas, support for nuclear energy, renewable energy, and energy efficiency).

Employment and the need to create jobs sometimes featured in climate change legislation, but this tended to be packaging designed to win support, rather than a primary motivation. The desire to make climate change a story of employment and growth is real and credible 4, but few laws contain many direct employment measures.

Two examples are: i) the US American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allocates USD 500 million to a grant programme supporting clean energy workforce training managed by the Department of Labor and USD 100 million for workforce training managed by the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability; and ii) South Korea’s Green Growth Law includes measures designed to gain a competitive advantage in low carbon industries, with a focus on business development and job creation…

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Policy Instruments

It has become customary to classify carbon management policies into three broad areas: (i) measures to put a price on carbon; (ii) measures to overcome energy efficiency barriers; and (iii) measures that promote technological change…The three approaches are incorporated to varying degrees in legislation.

There is widespread endorsement of market instruments to put a price on carbon. ‘Cap-and-trade’ is the core mechanism for achieving emissions reduction in the EU and it has featured strongly in laws in Brazil and South Korea, as well as draft legislation in Japan, Mexico and the USA. China is also planning to pilot emissions trading to help deliver its carbon intensity target under the 12th Five-Year Plan.

While most countries have provisions on renewable energy, their approaches differ from feed-in tariffs (for example, in Germany) to renewable energy standards (for example, in the UK), subsidies and tax credits.

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All 16 study countries have included energy efficiency in their climate legislation or regulation. This reflects the fact that, whatever the motivation for implementing climate-related laws and the angle of any political opposition to regulating carbon, saving energy enjoys broad support: it reduces costs, increases competitiveness, reduces the demand for energy, thus increasing energy security and reduces greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. Japan has a history of strong energy efficiency legislation, with its first energy efficiency law (the Law Concerning the Rational Use of Energy) passed in 1979. This law has been amended and updated and remains central to Japan’s energy legislation today. India introduced Energy Conservation Awards in 1993 to encourage and recognise industrial energy efficiency. China passed its Energy Conservation Law in 1997, and in the 11th Five-Year Plan, it set a target to reduce the energy intensity of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 20% from 2005 levels by 2010. The 12th Five-Year Plan, published in March 2011, includes a further target to reduce the energy intensity of GDP by 16 per cent by 2015.

Education features in legislation and policy in Brazil, China, France, Indonesia, the UK and elsewhere, recognising the importance of a well]informed public to maximise buying into the policies and measures needed to reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

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Many countries have set up new institutions or cross-governmental committees to oversee climate policy. For example, Brazil has passed Decree No. 6263/2007 which creates an Inter-ministerial Committee on Climate Change; in 2007, China established the National Coordination Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao and involving 20 ministries and government sectors; India has a Council on Climate Change, chaired by the Prime Minister; Indonesia has created a National Council for Climate Change involving 17 ministers and chaired by the President; Mexico, under a Presidential decree, created an Inter-Secretariat Commission on Climate Change in 2005; and South Korea recently formed a Presidential Committee on Green Growth. All of these initiatives demonstrate the seriousness with which climate change is being taken and recognise the necessity to coordinate climate change policy across the full range of ministerial portfolios, as well as the need for the Prime Minister or President to take difficult decisions when faced with competing priorities…